In the past, personal computer systems have generally been sold with no software, or only a limited amount of software, installed. Thus, a customer of the system had generally been required to install and configure the software of a system. Similarly, computer customers often were required to combine and configure the hardware in a computer system. However, computer systems are no longer sold as hardware boxes having software to be added by the customer or simply shipped with software, making software installation a responsibility of the user. More recently, computer systems have become available in a large number of configurations. Furthermore, it has become possible to custom-order a computer system having a particular hardware configuration. Also, computer manufacturers now provide turn-key computer systems that are immediately operable. However, a wide variety of software operating systems, drivers, application programs and the like are available so that a computer customer often must invest a substantial amount of time to configure the software in a computer system in a desired manner.
Computer manufacturers continually accelerate the rate of computer system production. While many more computer systems are built, expectations of customers are rising regarding the facility of immediately using a computer system without a time expenditure to configure the system in a desired manner. Computer manufacturers now offer hardware accessories and software in a combined system at the time of purchase.
An increasingly complex combination of internally-manufactured computer hardware and manufacturer-loaded software, which is furnished by external software venders, is creating substantial difficulty for computer manufacturers in the areas of customer support and warranty support. In particular, a common strategy of manufacturers is to preload hard disk drives of computer systems with common operating systems, for example DOS and Windows. In some cases, manufacturers incur the additional expense of shipping backup floppy disks for these operating systems, in combination with other software packages, to the customer. In other cases, manufacturers transfer to the customer the burden of writing from the hard drive to backup floppy disks. Customers find this task quite burdensome due to the very long time required to transfer backup copies to the floppy disks. If a customer fails to generate the backup floppy disks and the software on the hard drive is corrupted, a manufacturer must provide costly technical support services. Costs incurred in furnishing these services often cannot be recovered by the manufacturer. In addition, a customer who must rely on these technical services is commonly unable to use the computer for some amount of time so that anger and dissatisfaction of the customer result.
One method for preloading customer software is performed by extracting a hard drive from the computer assembly process, connecting the hard drive to a computer for the purpose of programming the drive, programming the drive, disconnecting the drive from the computer and returning the programmed hard drive to the computer assembly process for installation on a computer. This method is time consuming and, therefore, costly. Furthermore, disconnection and connection of the programmed hard drive often corrupts the software programmed onto the drive.
Another method for preloading customer software involves loading of the hard drive from a network after the computer hardware is assembled. This method results in high traffic on the network. In a large-volume manufacturing environment, this high traffic greatly reduces the throughput of the network. Furthermore, a network failure interrupts the entire manufacturing line.
What is needed is an improved process in which a manufacturer can tailor software to a particular customer's needs, in accordance with a customer order, load the tailored software onto a customer's hardware-specified system, and provide the customer with a capability to exactly restore the ordered software configuration without support from the manufacturer.